


Burning Doubt

by Nellie_McEnt



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale's Bookshop, Doubt, Fluff, Hope, Love, M/M, The bookshop, a lot of descriptions of light, and also of crowley, good omens book, good omens show, i tagged this as TV and book because it draws from both, ineffable husbands, pretentious metaphors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-07-20 08:20:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19989007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nellie_McEnt/pseuds/Nellie_McEnt
Summary: Aziraphale, as a rule, did not Doubt. And as far as he was concerned, Crowley--as a rule--did not love.





	Burning Doubt

Aziraphale, as a rule, did not Doubt. It didn’t become an angel, a servant of the Almighty, to go around Doubting Her Ineffable Plan, or anything else on Her green earth, for that matter. This was a pity, because it allowed Aziraphale to know, beyond a shadow of a Doubt, that Crowley did not—as a rule—Love. Demons didn’t.  
And this was a shame as well, because Aziraphale was certain that he himself was quite deeply in love with the demon. It hadn’t exactly been difficult to fall. Crowley was so kind, after all. It was he who saved the dove Aziraphale had smothered, and he who insisted on stopping Armageddon. Despite all his pretense to the contrary, Aziraphale saw the spark of good deep inside Crowley, and really, it would be less accurate to call it a spark as an entire bonfire.  
There were moments, quiet, late-afternoon minutes in the bookshop when time seemed stopped, when Aziraphale would look at Crowley and see only light and beauty. There was peace, and longing, and, yes, guilt, but a strange, slight guilt in the back of his mind. Hardly noticeable. They were comfortable moments; Aziraphale was absorbed in a book, and Crowley was staring out the window, lost in thought, or he had fallen asleep, and the golden light held dust particles suspended like ancient stars.  
Aziraphale’s eyes would linger, half-involuntarily, on his red-gold hair, the elegant slope of his nose, the thin line of his mouth. It was seldom smiling, usually tensed in a ponderous expression of concern, but every once in a while Crowley would take what seemed to Aziraphale to be an especially deep breath, and then his whole face would relax into a small smile. It was soft as starlight, that smile, and it made a bright star somewhere inside of Aziraphale burn wildly.  
Okay. Maybe Angels did—just sometimes—Doubt. Maybe, in these moments, Aziraphale Doubted himself, and the Almighty and Her ineffable plan. Because an angel was not allowed to love a demon any more than a demon was permitted to love—well, anything. And so, whenever Doubt crept their aching fingers into Aziraphale’s mind, he tried to extinguish the light that flared in him for the demon. He smothered it with hesitation, pressed it in the pages of a book, turned away from the steadily blinding rays of adoration and pretended he saw nothing, nothing at all.  
And eventually Crowley would stir, or Aziraphale would put the book away, and the sun would set, and there would be goodbyes, or dinner and then goodbyes. And in the gloom of evening or the bright lights of a restaurant, the stirrings of love in Aziraphale’s chest would be forgotten, or at least put aside.  
Still, they never went away for long.  
It was on one of these afternoons, when the world was held in thrall to the royal colors of autumn, that everything changed—Doubt, and Love, and Heaven and Hell. Aziraphale and Crowley had shared a bottle of wine and then settled into the same companionable routine; Aziraphale had opened a book, and Crowley had curled up in the corner of the sofa, stared out the window (and occasionally at the angel) for a while, and then fallen asleep. Aziraphale glanced over at him and smiled—a smile so sad and so full of love that Oscar Wilde’s editor would have removed even the briefest description of it from the manuscript before you could say “subtext.”  
Crowley stirred slightly, inhaled deeply, and smiled—Aziraphale could swear—back at him.  
Aziraphale couldn’t take it. He closed his book, shut his eyes, leaned back miserably, and willed himself to sleep.  
He woke several hours later, just after the sun had ducked below the horizon. The blue-grey gloom of twilight had settled over the shop like a blanket. Blinking his eyes, so unused to sleep, Aziraphale looked around fuzzily.  
Crowley was leaning one elbow on the back of the sofa and looking at him. His sunglasses were in his hand. “Welcome to the world of the waking, angel,” he said, putting them back on carelessly. “How did you sleep?”  
Aziraphale frowned. He hadn’t slept in years. Hundreds of them, in fact. He didn’t much care for it.  
“Well?”  
“Oh...fine, dear boy, just fine,” Aziraphale muttered vaguely.  
“What prompted this? I thought _virtue never sleeps _,” said Crowley sarcastically.__  
“It doesn’t,” muttered Aziraphale. Well. Only when it was having unvirtuous thoughts. Like how much it loved evil incarnate.  
Crowley raised an eyebrow, and Aziraphale sighed dramatically and made a show of standing up and brushing himself off.  
“Aziraphale,” said Crowley from the sofa. He turned apprehensively. The demon’s face, so languid and relaxed a moment before, was twisted with concern. “It’s not like you. Are you alright?”  
“Oh, yes. Quite alright, Crowley, no need to worry about me. Absolutely—“  
“Tickety-boo?”  
Aziraphale rolled his eyes. “Quite.”  
“You’re lying.”  
“I’m _not _.”__  
Crowley stood and took a single step toward Aziraphale. “Yes, you are.”  
Aziraphale shuddered. He felt like he was walking in a dream.  
“I’m—“ he began. “I’m—well, I’m doubting myself, if you must know.”  
Crowley’s head tipped to one side. The last fading dregs of light caught his hair, and it gleamed dully, a dying ember. “How so?” Quietly.  
“That’s hardly your concern, is it?” Aziraphale was flustered and trying not to show it.  
“Maybe not. But I thought we established that you’re my best friend, angel. I think I ought to know.”  
Aziraphale scowled. “It’s getting rather late, don’t you think, dear?” He walked past Crowley and picked up his book from the vacated sofa. _Please, take the hint _, he thought.__  
There was silence.  
“You know you don’t have to worry what Heaven thinks anymore, don’t you?”  
“No more than you have to worry about Hell,” said Aziraphale. And something caught in his mind and hope flared like a candle flame. He snuffed it out.  
“Yeah, exactly,” said Crowley.  
Maybe it was the darkness that had now almost claimed the room. Maybe it was the memory of Crowley’s eyes shining yellow in the twilight, just for a moment, before being shielded again. Maybe it was the candle, not really extinguished as well as Aziraphale wished.  
Whatever it was, the angel thought, _to Hell with it _, threw caution to the winds, and said: “I’m doubting whether I really ought to—well, whether I ought—to _love _an infernal being as much as I—hmm. As much as I do.”____  
Silence. Deeper, thicker than before. Slowly, Aziraphale turned around.  
The smile on Crowley’s face could have put the Milky Way to shame. Star clusters would have run screaming in jealousy if they had seen it. Nebulas everywhere shook, fearful of being fired and replaced. The sun was afraid she wouldn’t be able to rise the next morning, because there just wasn’t enough room in Creation for all that _light _.__  
“Hell, Aziraphale, I love you too,” said Crowley simply.  
The candle tipped over and burned the forest of Doubt to the ground.


End file.
